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Archaeologists may have discovered the village where Jesus is said to have appeared after he was crucified.
According to the Gospel of Luke, after Jesus was crucified, two of his disciples walked to the village of Emmaus; along their walk to the village, a stranger walked beside them and asked what had just happened in Jerusalem. It wasn't until they reached Emmaus and stopped for dinner that the stranger revealed that he was Jesus, in this biblical story.
In a paper set to be published in the series "New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region," two archaeologists propose that an archaeological site called Kiriath-jearim may be Emmaus. The location of Emmaus has long been a topic of debate, with a few different sites proposed in the past.
While biblical scholars generally agree that Jesus was a real person, they've long debated which stories in the Bible actually occurred and which ones did not. The story of Jesus reappearing at Emmaus may have never happened.
(Image credit: The Shmunis Family Excavations at Kiriath-jearim)
Complicated proposal
Several clues point to Kiriath-jearim being Emmaus. For instance, the Gospel of Luke says Emmaus is "60 stadia" from Jerusalem, a distance about equal to the 8 miles (13 kilometers) that separates Kiriath-jearim from the Old City of Jerusalem, wrote Israel Finkelstein, professor emeritus at the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and Thomas Römer, a professor of biblical studies at Collège de France, in the forthcoming article.
Recent excavations at Kiriath-jearim have also uncovered a series of fortifications that were renovated during the first half of the second century B.C., and according to the Book of Maccabees, the Seleucid Empire (an empire ruled by the descendants of one of Alexander the Great's generals) controlled much of the region, fortifying several sites, including Emmaus.
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Excavations indicate that these fortifications at Kiriath-jearim were renovated about 2,200 years ago, an event that appears to be described in the Book of Maccabees. Emmaus was one of the sites that was mentioned as being fortified at that time.
(Image credit: The Shmunis Family Excavations at Kiriath-jearim)
The researchers can't be completely certain that Kiriath-jearim is Emmaus and not another site fortified by the Seleucids. But the fact that the site is located 60 stadia from Jerusalem supports the proposal. Additionally, the other sites mentioned in the Book of Maccabees that the Seleucids fortified don't appear to match up well with Kiriath-jearim.
Adding more evidence for the proposal, pottery found at Kiriath-jearim suggests that the site was inhabited around the time that Jesus is said to have lived. This means there would have been an active village at the site for Jesus' disciples to visit and where Jesus could have appeared.
Problems with identification
There are, however, problems with the idea that Kiriath-jearim is Emmaus, the researchers wrote. For instance, there doesn't seem to be any linguistic connection between the names Kiriath-jearim and Emmaus, the researchers noted. Also, other sites do have at least tenuous links to Emmaus: A fourth-century historian named Eusebius wrote in his book "Onomasticon" that Nicopolis is Emmaus.
Other sites also have potential. For instance, Josephus, a historian who lived during the first century, wrote that retired Roman soldiers settled at Emmaus, which he claimed was only 30 stadia from Jerusalem, at a site located near Qaluniya (a village that was not abandoned until 1948).
Finkelstein and Römer are co-directors of excavations at Kiriath-jearim. After their paper is published, scholars not affiliated with the research project will be able to evaluate the proposal's evidence.
Owen Jarus is a regular contributor to Live Science who writes about archaeology and humans' past. He has also written for The Independent (UK), The Canadian Press (CP) and The Associated Press (AP), among others. Owen has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Toronto and a journalism degree from Ryerson University.
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